G4 iMac 17" 1.25GHz - Non working, but is now!

[jsarchibald]

I've been looking for a G4 iMac for a long long time now, but they are usually pick up only and/or go for stupid prices. I've missed out on a few good ones over the past two years by not watching the end of an auction.

Anyhoo, I saw a non working iMac with the 17" screen and the 1.25GHz processor locally, and it passed in. I offered $20, which they accepted. I picked it up tonight, and it would turn on but nothing on the screen. I realised that I needed to plug in some headphones to hear if any sounds played, and of course there were 3 chimes when turned on. RAM!

So I took the base off, cleaned it all thoroughly, and swapped the 256MB chip for a 512MB I had spare. Put it all back together again, and POW! Screen is crisp and bright, it booted quickly to Mac OS X 10.3.9, and runs nice and quietly. Huzzah, success!

Only thing to do now is give it a nice clean and detail on the exterior, and figure out why one RAM chip is not showing up. I never knew there were two different types of RAM in these things, but one of them is not recognising the chip. I should technically have 1GB from two 512MB chips...

[bibilit]

yes, strangely there is a full size desktop ram (hiden) an a so-dimm one near the Airport slot.

Nice conquest

[uniserver]

sometimes when people take the base off, when they put it back together there are some pins that can bend if you are not careful, and those pins are what carry the sound to the internal speaker, so if you bend the pins back to the right spot and are careful putting it back together the internal sound will come back. also make sure to clean and re-grease the 2 spots that make a thermal/mechanical connection for heat transfer...